[amsat-bb] Re: August AO-51 schedule is up!

[Tony Langdon]

At 01:50 PM 7/31/2007, Greg D. wrote:
>Wow, thanks Drew!
>
>What other hobby on the planet can you order up your own personal spaceship
>(at least, the illusion of it, part time). I feel so powerful!

LOL, I know that feeling.  I was doing the scheduling for SO-35 in 
this part of the world for a few months, until its untimely 
demise.  By making use of my local knowledge, I was able to give a 
better experience for local hams and take the load off the 
controllers - they only had to take my times and add that to master 
schedule on the next command run.

It also had the side effect that I was able to present more 
information to prospective satellite operators, like AOS, LOS and 
roughly where in the sky the bird would be during active passes, so a 
newbie could come up on the air without needing to do more than look 
at my site.

I also took requests from users into account, when they came.  It was 
a bit of work every couple weeks (especially the presentation side 
for the web, a LOT of running pass predictions and typing), but it 
did help a number of people.

73 de VK3JED
http://vkradio.com